Unwanted seeds could save badly burned Lost Pines

By Matthew Tresaugue

Updated 12:31 am, Friday, November 30, 2012

The unlikely heroes in healing the great pine forest of Central Texas are seeds that no one wanted.

The Texas A&M Forest Service was making plans to dump more than a half-ton of loblolly pine seeds into a landfill when the most destructive wildfire in state history began its deadly march through the Lost Pines in Bastrop County last year.

Now the seeds will be used in a massive, multiyear effort to restore the fabled forest, the westernmost stand of loblolly pines in the United States.

The fire burned so hot that it claimed not only 50 square miles of pines but their seeds, making it impossible for the trees to return without help.

To restore the Lost Pines, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and state forest service intend to plant more than 4 million trees on public and private land during the next five years. The Arbor Day Foundation is trying to raise $4 million, or $1 per tree, for the recovery effort.

The first seedlings, which come from the same genetic stock as the tall pines that carpeted the area before the fire, will arrive Tuesday at Bastrop State Park, about 35 miles east of Austin. Planting is scheduled to begin Saturday.

“If you are going to be successful in restoring the forest, you need the right seed source,” said Tom Byram, a geneticist with the Texas A&M Forest Service.

Oddly, the right seeds were sitting in the freezer of a grocer's warehouse in Lufkin last year when the wind-whipped fire began. Byram had stored 1,100 pounds of the seeds there for five years as the forest service tried to sell them.

The forest service began collecting the seeds two decades ago as part of a program to preserve and increase populations of pine trees across five Southern states.

Interest, however, faded for the loblolly seeds because they grow slowly into crooked trees intended for the drier climates of Central and West Texas. There's more demand in wetter, densely forested East Texas for pine varieties that can be harvested quickly for timber, Byram said.

While the Brookshire Bros. warehouse had room for the seeds, “I was starting to feel guilty about taking up the space,” said Byram, who was about to organize a crew to move them to a landfill when high winds knocked drought-weary trees into power lines, starting the blaze.

The fire raged with uncommon fury for five weeks, killing two people, destroying 1,673 houses and charring 33,000 acres.

Since then, experts in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma have grown the seeds into about 500,000 seedlings, each about 10 inches tall. Byram said there are enough seeds remaining to produce 14 million trees.

Even with the push to bring back the forest, it will take decades for each pine to reach a modest height of at least 50 feet, he said.

“People will need to be patient,” Byram said. “It's going to take 25 to 30 years for these trees to look like what they remember seeing.”